Legendre’s Symbol

May 1, 2012

The Legendre Symbol and its cousin the Jacobi Symbol are used in modular arithmetic to determine if a number a is a quadratic residue to the modulus m. A number a is a quadratic residue if there exists a number x such that x2 ≡ a (mod m) and is defined only when a and m are co-prime. For instance, a2 (mod 7) for a from 0 to 6 is the list 02 (mod 7) = 0, 12 (mod 7) = 1, 22 (mod 7) = 4, 32 (mod 7) = 2, 42 (mod 7) = 2, 52 (mod 7) = 4, and 62 (mod 7) = 1, so the quadratic residues of 7 are 1, 2 and 4 (0 is excluded because it isn’t co-prime to 7). The jacobi symbol considers any odd modulus; the legendre symbol is limited to odd prime moduli. The symbols are usually written in parentheses with a over m, like this: . Sometimes the symbol is written with a horizontal rule between the a and m, and sometimes it is written on a single line as (a / m).

The legendre/jacobi symbol can be calculated according to the following three termination rules:

Thus, the legendre/jacobi symbol is 1 if a is a quadratic residue, -1 if a is not a quadratic residue, and 0 if a and m are not co-prime.

Our various prime-number programs have used a definition of the legendre/jacobi symbol that doesn’t work; for some values of a and m it returned wrong results, and for other values of a and m it entered an infinite loop. This exercise fixes the problem.

Your task is to write a function that calculates the legendre/jacobi symbol using the rules given above. When you are finished, you are welcome to read or run a suggested solution, or to post your own solution or discuss the exercise in the comments below.

The ability to chain relational operators is a nice feature of Python syntax. It compiles to a series of 2-way relational tests ‘and’ed together. “if n%4 == m%4 == 3:” compiles like “if n%4 == m%4 and m%4 == 3:”, but the m%4 is only evaluated once. It is handy when you want to check if a value is between two limits, like “if lowerbound <= x = y <= z:" in a previous exercise to determine that y was no larger than either x or z. You can also chain any number together: "a c == d …”

Oops, wordpress ate some of my relational operators as html tags. Should be:

The ability to chain relational operators is a nice feature of Python syntax. It compiles to a series of 2-way relational tests ‘and’ed together. “if n%4 == m%4 == 3:” compiles like “if n%4 == m%4 and m%4 == 3:”, but the m%4 is only evaluated once. It is handy when you want to check if a value is between two limits, like “if lowerbound <= x < upperbound:". I used something like "if x >= y <= z:" in a previous exercise to determine that y was no larger than either x or z. You can also chain any number together: "a < b > c == d …”

In arithmetic mod m, the only numbers allowed are 0 to m-1 inclusive. There are no negative numbers. So any time you see a negative number you have to add m repeatedly until it is in the range 0 to m-1 inclusive. So yes, Rule 5 applies whenever a<0. I'll edit the rule.